Azure The Heartless.3261

> @"ZDragon.3046" said:

> Most nerfs dont make a build unviable they make them have an obvious weakness as all builds should have.

Couple things.

You're absolutely right about builds needing to have an inbuilt weakness.

As for people refusing to use builds when they are nerfed into having an obvious weakness, it's because of this

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> some of these classes need to be caught with their pants down unaware, otherwise they can draw the fight out far too long.

> assassination is healthy when you got high sustain, bunkerish classes that still can deal some dps.

While nerfing overperforming builds down is useful, unless that nerfing is applied across the board, people will continue gravitating to whatever build allows them to be unkillable or whatever builds can oneshot the otherwise unkillable builds and afford them the least amount of time possible to heal.

Both unkillable bunker and untelegraphed oneshot are bad. Unless that hits every class at once (and quickly fixes the builds that manage to escape) its a pipe dream to expect people to just deal with and continue to play their builds being nerfed.

> @"aymnad.9023" said:

> People saying both are equivalent or that ranger is superior clearly have no idea how the game works. On the long run warrior is way superior.

> What rangers do have :

> * A higher burst

> * A faster heal

>

> What warriors do have :

> * A higher sustain

> * More damage source (more skills do damage)

>

> As a ranger you already struggle vs any matchup who have ways to take / mitigate the hit in close combat or can quickly close the distance if you are in range. If you eat burst then yes you lose. If they are running away then it still is a win because this means either they do not capture the point or they do not hit enemies.

It's totally reasonable that they would compare those.

Rangers have access to high sustain too, in the form of stealth access, higher duration and lower cooldown blocks, and more plentiful evades.

They also have more damage modifiers than warrior does, so while they may not have as many buttons to press to do damage, the buttons they __do__ press do heavy damage. Further, the ones that do damage, like smoke assault on soulbeast and rapid fire, create situations where you would need to dodge just as effectively as warrior does now. They have just as much mobility as warrior, but they can damage you more aggressively from range and hide their repositioning, so their mobility is oftentimes more dangerous.

Having more buttons to press to do damage is not a factor that makes any kind of balancing okay. It really doesn't matter how many keys you need to hit if the end result is oppressive levels of damage coupled with oppressive levels of sustain. No matter what route you take to get there, it's bad.

I'm not going to comment here or there regarding ranger. I'm just... -watching- what people have to say about it, and how it lines up with things they have issue with. But people that are claiming ranger is basically just as or more obnoxious than warrior -do- have a point.

**slam poetry bongos in the distance**

Edited for reasons.

> @"Marxx.5021" said:

> > @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> > I'm not saying our matchmaking is perfect by any means, but it generally does a pretty decent job of making sure both teams are balanced.

>

> No wonder matchmaking is so bad if you guys really think average mmr makes balanced teams.

Edited:

It's more than just the average in this case, though. There isn't much variance between the ratings of the individual players that constitute the teams either.

That being said, it is important to note that there is a point to be had when it comes to how team comp also contributes to match outcome.

Even if the classes get balanced perfectly, matches are still going to bomb if the comps don't work together or are weak, in addition to the cases mentioned above. I guess class swapping is a good thing then, to give people a chance to correct -at least- comp disparity.

Thank you for the communication, Ben. It's appreciated.

This is either

*The obvious

*Proof that even duo queue can guarantee fights vs pugs

*Proof that hard carry builds hard carry

or a combination of the above being used by a few players to exploit the ranking system.

That being said

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> it's up to the devs to design the systems not the players and if somthing can be manipulated by the players that's on the devs more so than the players. I mean look at the win/lose ratio, their not trying to hide anything obviously.

I'm not going to rant and rave about that. It's being allowed so-

> @"crepuscular.9047" said:

> seriously... waited 6+ minutes and you give us this kind of matchup? a group of silvers/golds vs plats/legends

>

> if there isnt enough plats and legend, change it to something like a 2v2 or 3v3 king of the hill style map like GW1's HoH where the top tier pvpers can duke it out among themselves over a single point

It's not even the matchmaker at this point, it's just people not wanting to play I'd assume, so MMR is scraping people together from all divisions.

6 minute queue means MMR is sweating trying to find 10 people.

shrinking the mu may indeed work, but only if the classes are balanced... So-

Not to mention if they split it people are just going to smurf/derank to harass lower tiers.

@"Psycoprophet.8107" You might want to reconsider before someone reconsiders for you js. Theyve warned me for less.

> @"Nerah.8235" said:

> What do you mean by squishy? If you are in an evade frame or simply "not there", you take zero damage, even if you would have normally taken 1,000,000 HP in damage: there literally is no better armor than mobility. Thief types are one of the only professions that can theoretically fight groups of enemy players and not die, while slowly focussing less mobile classes down one-by-one. While a bit off topic, in WvW, I have personally seen thieves survive extended fights with up to 20 enemy players. It is simply incredible to watch. That is a lot of things, but is not "squishy". The really good thieves I have seen in PvP almost never take hits due to a combination of positioning and evade frames, so effectively have "infinite" HP if played to maximum effect. That is not squishy.

> Also, I think it is feasible to simply nerf mobility. Think about it. If a specific case is nerfed (thief), the mobility problem just jumps to whatever case has the next best mobility, because mobility in this game as it is currently implemented is simply too powerful a force multiplier. It increases BOTH offensive power (choosing where and when to fight, being able to hit and run) and defensive abilities (being able to dodge close threats, reposition instantly to avoid hits, or simply flee if things go south). Mobility needs to be a good option, but NOT the most powerful one. ANETs problem is that, up to now, they allow a few incredibly (mechanically) powerful abilities to exist, but spread them very unevenly across classes for ultimately "thematic" reasons. In PvE, this is somewhat dissapointing, but in PvP modes, it strips the agency from the guy on the other side of the dagger, and makes the whole mode suck. ANET tried to "balance" this disparity with the conquest "win" mechanic chicanery, although a lot of people just play "death-match" at this point in the game's life and just go for thrills and kills. If you have ever had a good thief player decide to farm you, then the whole facade crumbles and becomes a huge suck experience, and you realize you never had a chance.

So, while I disagree with your "effectively infinite HP" definition, I can definitely agree that Necro(And other low mob class build) MU vs thief sucks hard. I don't think removing the mobility on thief is the answer though, because then they're just going to be forced to hug the low mob classes and the brittleness of their HP pool is going to be made evident fast.

I understand your problem, but I've had a bunch of close games vs other classes on a mobile thief, so I think the easier route would be to give the ones that struggle more thorns to make fending thieves off (and downing those that make poor judgement calls) possible.

> @"SoulGuardian.6203" said:

> All throughout the years, and all the time you played the game...

> What is that one thing in GW2 that was really breathtaking for you?

The fact that scarlet nuked a major city, it turned into what is essentially a raid, then got rebuilt like nothing happened and the only way you'd know it got nuked is if you listen to NPC people complain about the lingering effects of it in game.

That kitten __blew my mind__ . I wish theyd do it more often but I can imagine the work....

> @"Curennos.9307" said:

> I had a DH complain about pistol whip as he pressed not a single button (the dude literally stood still, even when not stunned) during multiple PWs.

>

> Same match, I had a spellbreaker stand in my Black Powder **and** eat every single PW.

>

> What a world we live in.

People still stand in plaguelands, dont be surprised.

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> I'm not hard to catch in the arena, I'm usually on my warrior now days poking around, "Jean Tannenn". I'll give you a whisper if I see you.

Short cut, brown hair, wears a jacket?

If so, I think I ganked you once on a pink, feathery mes cat ~~sorry~~

> @"Alin.2468" said:

> We need to accept our own vote and embrace the current _status quo_.

We may have voted for it, but it was a bad call.

>all players (bots included) actually have a common ground; and the fact that it lasted so far, means it's a huge success. I know this may be hard to believe, but it's also the truth.

It's the truth, but its a crappy truth. Bots shouldn't by nature of PvP organization have common ground with human players sitting down and choosing to do this for their evening/morning/afternoon. If that's the case, something needs to change. Whether swiss does or does not help that remains to be seen.

Spirits op pls nerf

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> Just imagine bulls rush if it had something like 3 charges (heh, pun). Other than the fact it's already OP and it would be super busted, that would really be un-fun to play against. That's how PW feels.

~~How dare you call bull's rush OP~~

Nah I've been on the receiving end as necro after hearing frustration from a friend who mains necro vs it. The only thing that saved me from getting stunlocked is foot in the grave, doom, and running staff if they are traited to rip swiftness from me. I can def see how it is annoying.

Vs necro though. I have no sympathy for any other class fighting it. Especially soulbeast.

And I need that evade. It's the only thing stopping me from bitter 18k backstabs.

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> > > Can't we just agree that **most** every profession had some broken kitten that needs to be fixed instead of wagging our fingers at each other like "Nuh uh, my professions fine, yours is the broken one!"

> >

> > **NEVER**

> >

> > Jokes aside: I'm totally fine with a nerf to the -stun- portion of the thief skill, just not the evade. But in this instance in particular, you're going to have to drag that evade away from my thief's cold dead fingers/claws/charr-grabbers.

> >

> >

> >

>

> Honestly the stun is the only thing I have a problem with. Being able to spam something that removes agency from the player just isn't fun.

Then we're on the same page. As I mentioned in the other thread, I use it defensively. The stun is just frosting.

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said:

> What I ment is that there is no way to counter evades/invulnerabilities. No abilities in thief arsenal can specifically target evades.

> What I was saying wasnt targeting P/W at all.

> there is no boon, no condition and no ability nothing that screws with it.

I apologize.

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> Can't we just agree that **most** every profession had some broken kitten that needs to be fixed instead of wagging our fingers at each other like "Nuh uh, my professions fine, yours is the broken one!"

**NEVER**

Jokes aside: I'm totally fine with a nerf to the -stun- portion of the thief skill, just not the evade. Regarding that in particular, you're going to have to drag that evade away from my thief's cold dead fingers/claws/charr-grabbers.

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> Personally, my experience playing thief, I don't find stealth at all punishing to play. I burst, if it doesn't kill I reset with stealth and do it again. If I get revealed, good thing I have a two count reveal removal. I get locked down? Shadow step. I don't play stealth on DrD though.

I play Sword/Pistol Daredevil, and I use Staff on swap. I don't have revealed removal on that build, and I occasionally do not run shadowstep.

(If you want to see how it works give me a fight in Arena.)

Just keep in mind that some people don't play the burst playstyle. Some people __loathe__ the burst playstyle.

>I play a good amount of thief and dont get me wrong I do enjoy playing it. I've kind of grown bored with it's, for lack of a better word, "cheap" playstyle. It may have a low health pool, but none of that matters if you don't take damage. It may not have the highest burst in the game but that also doesn't matter if you can consistently hit your damage.

I got bored of D/P long ago, and that's why I'm playing what I'm playing now. As it stands, though, pistol whip is where a lot of my mitigation comes from. I use it defensively and very rarely offensively. Stealthing forever to burst someone, when I can instead fight them visibly and react to all of their moves feels like a step backward for me.

> Thief's mitigation FAR out classes warrior or guardian. People seem to think "mitigation" means "tanking" but that's not it at all. After all, squishy ol' chrono tanks for raids. Being able to completely avoid attacks all together by shadow stepping out or evading and removing your self from LoS you can negate tonnssss of damage. If whatever you're facing doesn't have a teleport of some kind then it should rarely ever kill you as a thief. Of course every profession has it's weaknesses, I'm not saying thief doesn't, but it's not some flimsy paper that will blow over if you sneeze damage at it. I don't buy the "oh poor little helpless me needs this busted skill or I just canttt playyyyy" that a lot of thief players throw out. I'm just as dead on warrior if I don't block/invlun a fresh air ele burst as you are on thief if you don't shadow step away.

All true, but in PVP where conquest is the name of the game, leaving means giving up point progress, and there should be at least a couple of builds on thief that do not center around only decapping uncontested nodes, contesting nodes from outside, or losing node progress as you mitigate because your mitigation demands it.

> Everyone is always going to to hate thief because it always has the initiative in a fight and that feels "unfair", pun intended. That's not an excuse for it to have a busted skill. To be clear, I'm not mad at thief, I'm bored with how unfun the current meta is. It's just a bunch of "whiff until someone lands a 1-shot/CC lock combo". Imagine how boring something like football or soccer would be if it was over at the first one to score a point. **That's basically the meta right now. If you don't get killed instantly from stealth and you manage to survive the following CC spam fest then you MIGHT have a chance to fight back which will either result in the opponent resetting/running or getting basically one-shot themselves. It's become the rare fight to have good back and forth play when that should be the norm.**

Pistol whip, at least the way I play it, **creates the bolded situation.** That's the whole reason I'm being so aggressive about changing it. I absolutely do not want to go back to stealth oneshot.

If you want to fight it, try me. I usually hang out in the arena when there's not an event going on using a charr DD named Cheshire Mistcloak.

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said:

> first of all, learn to read and comprehend. I wasnt complaining about P/W. This is why you dont take words out of context.

?

Okay, let's not take your words out of context.

You're talking about other things of course, but none of the other things you are talking about are currently seen as egregiously unbalanced **by the forum community as it currently stands.** So I'm addressing **what is seen as unbalanced** in particular. If you think any of the other mechanics, or thief in general, is unbalanced, that's fine and dandy and not my battle. But, since you **included what is seen as unbalanced** , I replied to you.

Observe.

>**build is weighted by the strongest ability.**

> **thats why PW is spammed**

Implication: Pistol whip is strong.

> Thats why thief will always be kitten to balanced.

> In theory every single thief ability should be kitten, but they should cover specific cases...

Assertion: Thief is hard to balance because its builds have spammable strong skills. Every thief ability should be garbage on their own but counter specific things. Whether you think that this is the ideal, or what the designers intended doesn't matter. What matters is you think it's the right direction and that some skills do not fit that.

One of those skills, as you implied above, is pistol whip.

That's what I'm here for.

People who want to come claim thief needs to be nerfed because shortbow, flanking strike and/or vault are free to do that (and be debated).

> ...but in reality **there is nothing that can exploit evade/invuln spam** so there are build that just spam 1 ability and call it a day.

I provided a rebuttal to **this point in particular**. Don't know why you think I don't understand what you're saying. The only class that can spam one ability is thief, and since you mentioned that you considered pistol whip strong, it makes perfect sense to assume that you feel that thief can spam one ability and **not be exploited.**, and that the pool of those abilities that they could spam includes the one that you consider to be strong.

I asserted that, at least in the case of pistol whip, they **absolutely could, very easily.** Don't know why that made you angry.

As for the rest:

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said:

> sec of all, not many abilities can be cast fast to cancel the cast...

Fair, but some can. MoD, for example, is instant. For the others, you dont need to cancel the cast. You can interrupt the aftercast.

> cast can be covered by terrain, can be faked and moved by steal/shadowstep/signet or whatever.

Mindgames/Terrain based play really doesn't count as making the skill itself broken. At some point a player being cunning with how they approach you needs to not be attributed to the class being broken.

> And in rality even if you DO stun thief, he can remove said stun 3 times. You better have more then 3 stuns and land them all mate.

Or you can use a high damaging move instead and give him direct damage, even besides the fact that moves that stun recharge almost twice as fast, if not faster, than the thief's stunbreaks.

> @"shadowpass.4236" said:

> No point in cheating when I can just play during normal hours and still climb.

That may be the case for you, but you are not everyone. Part of balancing rewarding is to make playing underhanded less appealing/ more difficult in conjunction with punishing it. People still pirate despite threats of fines, and people can and will continue to wintrade as long as it is optimal.

Any system change that makes people more inclined to do this should be reconsidered. We want more people coming in, not more people driven out by people optimizing matches with wintrading until the game ceases to be a game.

In a 5 v 5 where any one actor can constitute a loss, people that have the means to alter that matchup so the loss always populates the opposing side will __always__ do it. That compulsion is what creates metas, what causes overpowered builds to become prevalent, and what eventually kills game balance. You absolutely don't want that. The honor system doesn't work on the internet.

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said:

> In theory every single thief ability should be kitten, but they should cover specific cases, meaning you can exploit specific things out of enemies, but in reality there is nothing that can exploit evade/invuln spam so there are build that just spam 1 ability and call it a day.

Why are people pretending like you can't start casting a stun in the middle of pistol whip so it lands while the anim finishes?

Its not nothing. any high damaging/cc move once that thief commits to pistol whip is going to hit them if you cast it in the middle of their swipes, whether or not they stow.

Its like half the people upset about it have never played a fighting game where they had to learn frame data.

But w/e

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> That's too many buttons. Why can't I just have it on the one button? Would make life much easier.

Idunno, ask anet why they make some classes have to only press one button to survive. That seems like a design flaw~

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> A hand full. Warrior, thief, ele, guardian. It's not about the counter play honestly, it's that it's a complete bummer to fight against. I wasn't targeting specifically PW in this post either, just all the OP overloaded unfun skills/combos floating around.

I really think that based on how much your survivability scales, that is more or less acceptable.

If you can shrug off hits and resustain immediately, you probably don't need invulns while doing damage. If you die immediately to anything that is Mara Amulet or worse looking at you, you probably should have something like that, especially if the attack is range limited and counterable.

we have examples of both in the current meta, and how they feel. Weaver on the op end, and Necro on the other.

Addressing the elephant here, I can completely see how pistol whip(though you may not be referring to it specifically, other people definitely are) is frustrating, and it makes me cringe to see people 3 3 3 3 and get away with it.

In a meta where someone can press 7 and reveal you if you are 600r in their general vicinity, or they auto you, or they are targeting you, and -not taking a glass amulet- means your damage is, at best, annoying, its pretty damn punishing to rely on stealth.

So, its either that, we pick up pistol pistol again, we pick up sword/dagger again, we pick up staff staff again, we poke you with sword 2, or we play glass D/P and run with shortbow.

All of those options people hate, so at this point.... yknow, stay mad if you are?

> @"Dantheman.3589" said:

> > @"SeikeNz.3526" said:

> > because thief can spam the same skill forever, they need to add a cast time or use more init points to thief skills if they reuse it

>

> Lol so ppl thought s/d was meta still because they were to busy spamming flanking strike. makes sense

"3 SPAM"

-Every thief complainer since 2012

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> > > It's not like warrior can shadow step AND the skill is on a cooldown so why not? Damage while invlun? Check. Overloaded skill? Check. I mean, I can't believe this change hasn't already been made. Seems right up the ally of the current meta.

> >

> > Warrior has a lot of cc that can lead into it. They also generally don't need to bail or spend the rest of their rotation dodging things for half their HP.

> > Totally for giving it a damage buff though. it's hard to land, almost impossible to get the last hit.

> >

>

> Nahhhh, that doesn't fit the current meta though. It's got to be invuln **while** doing damage.

**Cautiously eyes fishhook**

It already can do that, without being rooted. Three of its skills give it 0 damage windows. Four if you take zerker~

It would make sense if it were __more squishy__ but not as it is now.

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> It's not like warrior can shadow step AND the skill is on a cooldown so why not? Damage while invlun? Check. Overloaded skill? Check. I mean, I can't believe this change hasn't already been made. Seems right up the ally of the current meta.

Warrior has a lot of cc that can lead into it. They also generally don't need to bail or spend the rest of their rotation dodging things for half their HP, so for them probably evade is a bit much.

Totally for giving it a damage buff though. it's hard to land, almost impossible to get the last hit. Last hit would be neat if it also stunned you too.